Office Hours

We work until the needs of our last patient for the day have been met. We sometimes go to lunch from about 12:30 till 2 o'clock. We do physicals (DOT, pre-employment) during the same hours the clinic is open Monday-Thursday, but call to be sure Dr. Hayden is in clinic when you need your exam done.

CBD oils in clinic strength from Green Roads Wellness.

Sublingual, capsule, and topical.

has selected Dr. Robert Hayden as "Best of the Best for 2015"

in the Chiropractic category in Griffin and Spalding County for 2013-2015.

Educational News Blog

We recommend educating yourself as much as possible about your health and wellness. Here are a few articles written by Robert A. Hayden, DC, PhD, FICC. But by all means continue your education beyond what you find here.

Our spine is one of the most important parts of our body, and is too often neglected.Contrary to what people may believe, the less you move, the more you can damage your spine. Spinal degeneration is one of the fastest-growing health conditions, affecting people of all ages — even kids. This situation is mostly linked to a sedentary lifestyle. For adults, it may be long hours in front of a computer or long distances inside a car; for kids it may be choosing video games instead of physical activities, or sitting in front of the TV for long periods of time.

According to Dr. Robert Hayden, an American Chiropractic Association media spokesperson, about 80 percent of Americans will suffer back pain at some point in their life, and many will have recurrent issues. A 2015 Gallup survey suggested that more than 33 million Americans sought chiropractic care within a year of that study, representing about 14 percent of the population.

In the course of a day at the clinic, we encounter a wide range of human frailties. Particularly when we do Department of Transportation (DOT) exams, the topic of sleep and rest arises. Specifically, we are dealing with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

There are so many issues like this that make me wonder whether a condition has worsened in recent years or whether there is merely more awareness of it today. The former is possible because some of the causative factors may be more in play. The latter is likely because information is ubiquitous today on the internet and 24/7 news cycles.

So what is OSA? In some folks, during sleep there is a partial or complete obstruction of the airway. This leads to low oxygen, which your brain bitterly resents. It reacts by driving blood pressure and heart rate up, and this acceleration of vital signs stimulates the waking centers of the brain. Thus, sleep is interrupted.

The person who experiences this usually snores loudly. Spouses, bed partners, and possibly the neighbors and pets are all suffering sleep loss. Snoring is not just the subject of numerous complaints. It might be a sign of a serious health issue.

Yes, it’s February, so it’s “Heart Month.” You may be thinking that this designation is linked to the fact that Valentine’s Day is embedded squarely in the center of it. This is actually a happy coincidence.

Valentine’s day has a somewhat nebulous origin, with some people tracing it to dark and foreboding stories of ancient Rome or to the Catholic church in the third century A.D. The modern feeding frenzy on chocolate is very different, indeed, from sagas of martyrdom and murder.

The “Heart Month” idea was literally an act of Congress dating back to February, 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed the first one. It was a health promotion in a day when more than half of all deaths were due to cardiovascular disease if they were not in Viet Nam. Today, cardiovascular disease claims about 18 million lives worldwide annually, though you can bet the farm that is under-reported in countries that lack functional governments.

According to the American Heart Association, 2,300 Americans die daily of cardiovascular disease, or one every 38 seconds. That means that while I type this, we will lose several families. I’ll hurry.

So, for Heart Month, let’s talk a bit about how to take care of yours. Here are a few ideas that might help.

The question often arises in a chiropractic office, either when someone else uses the term with a patient or when I need to use it to describe what I see from the history and physical exam. The question: “What is stenosis?”

The word sounds threatening because it has three syllables. Have you ever noticed that the amount of pain, expense, and personal danger associated with the condition is directly proportional to the number of syllables in the name?

Stenosisis the term we use to describe what happens when a hole is too small. It is used in cardiovascular discussions when blood vessels are clogged with plaques or clots, making them smaller in diameter and more resistant to blood flow. In musculoskeletal terms, stenosis usually refers a hole through which nerves must pass. When those holes are too small, nerves may become pressurized, leading to pain, numbness, tingling, and/or muscle weakness in the areas served by those nerves.

Patients with lumbar spinal stenosis—one of the most common reasons for spinal surgery in seniors—are commonly recognized by a bent-forward, shuffling posture and a characteristic small-step gait. Stenosis surgery, however, is a major procedure that is recommended only when conservative methods of care aren’t effective—or when stenosis is caused by such things as tumors or accompanied by intolerable pain or severe neurological problems, such as loss of bowel and bladder function.

I just realized how alliterative that title is. I assure you that was accidental, but notice that I left it as is.

Early this morning, a potential patient approached me for a consultation. This lady has a form of cancer with which she has been coping for several months. A more recent development has been hip pain that radiated down to the knee.

If you have cancer, any new pain can be very frightening for the implications alone. This particular pain was worse at night, and anything that awakens you with pain in the middle of the night can be imagined to be something awful. It is easy to see why she was worried.

I am often asked whether chiropractors treat people with cancer. There was a time when cancer was considered a contraindication for chiropractic care. That is a false notion.

The title for this discussion was taken from a commercial for potato chips. The maker was daring us to try to eat just one chip, knowing that the American taste for calorie-dense, salt-laden junk food is overpowering. Really, it was a good ad campaign. I have never been able to eat “just one.”

Much worse than potato chip gluttony, which is bad enough, is our current national dilemma. People can’t take just one opiate sometimes. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has declared that opiate addiction in America is now an epidemic.

Let’s have a serious talk for a minute.

Overdose deaths continue to rise in the United States. Two-thirds of these overdoses involve opioids. By 2016, the number of overdose deaths from all opioids, including those given by prescription and heroin, was five times higher than rates just 15-16 years ago. During this time 600.000 people died, or 115 Americans daily. By the way, for you history buffs, that is about the number of deaths on both sides during the American War Between the States.